Read.isi is an R-Project extension package that allows users to gain automated access to data from the World Fertility Survey (WFS) program. Presently, no software for advanced statistical analyses is capable of doing so.

The quote above is from my website, and is for the large part also in the R-Newsletter. The edition that Read.isi is mentioned in is available here (PDF).

The package is available from CRAN.

The presentation itself went well. I was presenting in one of the larger rooms of the conference, to an audience of about 50-60 people. I was rather content with that number, especially because I received some nice and supportive feedback. This feedback made rather clear, however, that I’m not a professional programmer (which I obviously already knew). Fortunately, the suggestions were focused on performance, rather than preventing errors.

I is always a nice topic to talk about with fellow conference attendants: are you presenting something? Quite some of the people who asked me that, appeared to have read my abstract. After my presentation, one person came to speak to me. He used to work with the Word Fertility Survey and said he would have loved my package to be available back then.

But most of all, the chair of the sessions I presented Read.isi in, also one of the members of the R core group, suggested to refer to my package from within the data manual of R-Project itself. To me, this is a level of endorsement I hadn’t expected and is a strong stimulus to keep improving my package.

All in all, I’m very happy with the way Read.isi was received.

The presentation went well. I received some very nice suggestions on improving the package from people who are real programmers. Indeed, it probably will increase the speed of the package. Also, Duncan Murdoch, the chair of the session, suggested that the package should be referred to from the R-Project web-site!

More information on this package can be found below, or on the Read.isi page on this site, which will continuously be updated when development on this package continues.

Read.isi

Read.isi is an R-Project extension package that allows users to gain automated access to data from the World Fertility Survey (WFS) program. Presently, no software for advanced statistical analyses is capable of doing so.

Due to technological progress and software development, it sometimes is no longer possible to automatically read older data-files into statistical software, for they are often distributed as raw (ASCII) data without proper means to read those data into statistical packages. However, especially for those interested in using data to perform longitudinal analyses, these older sets of data are very valuable. This situation was encountered regarding the World Fertility Survey (WFS), a three decennia old, internationally comparative survey program on fertility issues.

It is available from within the R-Project software, and downloadable from CRAN.

Presentation at useR! 2008

The Read.isi package has been presented at the useR! 2008 conference in Dortmund, Germany. Please feel free to download one or more of the following files:

• Read.isi presentation slides
• Presentation notes
• Read.isi conference paper

Today I was notified that my proposal for a presentation on userR! 2008, the The R User Conference 2008, is approved. Actually, I applied for a poster-presentation, but apparently the organization upgraded it to a full presentation. The presentation will be on a macro I programmed, enabling me to retrieve old statistical data, which was incompatible with commonly used statistical programs.

From the proposal:

Due to technological and software development, it sometimes is no longer possible to automatically read older data-files into statistical software. Especially data-files that originate from the times magnetic tapes were used to store data are often distributed as raw (ASCII) data, without proper means to read those data into statistical packages.
However, for those interested in using data to perform longitudinal analyses, these older sets of data are very valuable.
In the Netherlands, the national archive for data storage (DANS) is currently organizing conferences on a unified and time-proof manner of storing data-files. But what to do with those data that already have become difficult to access?

The solution I came up with consists of a software macro, that read and interprets the code-book and converts this to syntax allowing the original data to be read into a statistical package. It is programmed for R-Project, the open-source software package for statistical analysis that I work with and write about. A first public release is scheduled shortly before the conference.

The conference will be held in Dortmund, August 12-14. It will be the ideal opportunity of sharing my approach with experts in the field and perhaps find some people who are interested in using it.